Joseph Sinel

Joseph Sinel (13 December 1844 in St Helier, Jersey – 2 April 1929) was a naturalist and archaeologist.

Sinel was the youngest son of Philip Sinel, a wholesale tobacco merchant, and Charlotte Babot. When fifteen he entered Voisin & Co.’s furniture department, where he eventually became manager.^[1] His spare time was spent at low tide amongst the rocks of St Clement’s Bay, where the wealth of marine life in the pools fascinated him. He determined to devote his life to natural science.

Sinel resigned his position at Voisin's, and started business as a taxidermist. He gave a number of lectures to a variety of groups. Papers which he contributed to "Science Gossip" brought him English correspondents, many of whom crossed to Jersey to obtain his help in collecting specimens. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace frequently wrote to him about topics of marine zoology. With his son-in-law, James Hornell, he built in 1891 a biological station at Havre Des Pas with aquarium tanks for the study of marine life and the supply of living specimens to students. He attempted to revive the local oyster fisheries.^[1] A Jersey Oyster Culture Company was formed and quantities of spat from Auray were placed in cage traps near Green Island, but the site proved insufficiently protected against storms, and the enterprise failed.^[2] In 1907 he became curator of the Société Jersiaise Museum, a post which he held until his death.^[1] Most of the zoological exhibits were his handiwork.

Sinel was also interested in psychical research. He wrote the book The Sixth Sense (1927), which proposes that the pineal gland serves as the biological organ responsible for clairvoyance and telepathy, detecting etheric vibrations analogous to wireless signals. Reinterpreting Descartes’ dualist view through a materialist lens, Sinel argues that these phenomena follow physical laws and originate in the nervous system,^[3] particularly through stimulation of the visual cortex independent of the eyes. Drawing on neurophysiology, evolutionary theory, and contemporary technologies, he claims that the pineal gland once enabled a now-suppressed “sixth sense,” still accessible in children, animals, and altered states like hypnosis. His experiments with a child medium, although methodologically limited, aimed to demonstrate extrasensory perception as a physiological capacity. Sinel framed telepathy as vibrational resonance between brains and explained hypnotism as a state that enhances receptivity by silencing normal cognitive interference.

A review in The Quarterly Review of Biology described it as "an entertaining little book... [but] very weak in spots."^[4]

• The Complete Guide to Jersey (1896)
• The Wonders of Nature 2 volumes (1900)
• Fishes of the Channel Islands (1906)
• An Outline of the Natural History of our Shores (1906)
• Crustacea of the Channel Islands (1906)
• Notes on the Lizards of the Channel Islands (1907)
• The Relative Ages of the Channel Islands (1908)
• The Reptilia, Batrachia, and Mammalia of the Channel Islands, their Origin and Modification by Isolation (1908)
• The Geology of Jersey: With Special Reference to Its Stratigraphy and Relation to the Continental Coast (1912)
• Prehistoric Times and Men of the Channel Islands (1914)
• The Children’s World of Wonders 3 volumes (1924)
• The Sixth Sense: A Physical Explanation of Clairvoyance, Telepathy, Hypnotism, Dreams, and Other Phenomena Usually Considered Occult. Forty Years of Study, Observation and Experiment (1927)

Nature Stories for the Young 3 volumes

• George Reginald Balleine. (1948). A Biographical Dictionary of Jersey. Staples Press.
• F. C. S. Schiller. (1927). The Sixth Sense. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 24: 138-139. (Criticism of Sinel's telepathy experiments).

• Media related to Joseph Sinel (naturalist) at Wikimedia Commons